Welcome to SST

SST is an open source, cross platform simulation platform that provides a framework to connect multiple simulated hardware objects including CPUs, network, memory, etc. Simulations using the toolkit can be run either single node, or run on multiple nodes via MPI. The toolkit provides a parallel discrete event core as well as several programming interfaces including classes to manage random number generation, statistics handling, simulation output and efficient memory pooling for simulation events. The most recent performance evaluation has shown that SST can scale to simulate beyond 1.5M objects and operate efficiently on simulations up to 128 dual-processor nodes.

This quick start guide is intended to get the user up and running with SST as quickly as possible. It is intended for users with intermediate knowledge in the operation of Unix/Linux/OSX environments.

NOTE: Building SST can sometimes be cumbersome and error prone due to the sheer number of combinations of operating systems, compiler versions and external required components. It is STRONGLY recommended that new users follow the detailed description of how to build SST and its external component dependancies referenced at Detailed SST Build and Install Instructions.

Building SST External Components

SST has a number of external components that are required to be installed on the users machine before building SST. These components are identified in the Release Notes.

OpenMPI is recommended to be installed on the users machine before building SST. These components may already exist on the system or can be installed from a distribution source (i.e. Linux Distros or MacPorts).

The instructions provided below assume that these required components are installed in their default system locations.

Note: In some cases, the components provided with the OS or distribution may not be configured correctly or may be an incorrect version. The user is strongly advised to double check this information.

If a new element (or new files) is added to the source code, it will be necessary to completely rebuild the configuration script (autogen.sh then configure) to add the new element into the build system.

To clone the latest project source code on the devel branch (from GitHub):

Using Git

git clone -b devel https://github.com/sstsimulator/sst-core.git

git clone -b devel https://github.com/sstsimulator/sst-elements.git

The build process is the same as described above, except the user must perform a $ ./autogen.sh before running the configure file.

Note: The devel branch is under active development and is tested nightly. Code in the devel branch may be non-functional at any time.

Additional information on running and creating components for SST may be found at sst-simulator.org

Developers and researchers are encouraged to be part of SST Development. Contact SST Support to be added to the team.